Priceus Rubbish
Cartoonist: Kayla E.
Publisher: Fantagraphics
PUBLICATION DATE: April 2025
Kayla E.’s Full-LEngth Graphic novel debut, Priceus RubbishIs One of the Most Inventive Books i’ve Ever Read. It reels songs audience in quickly with an aesthetic that feels like post-war was pop art, plus a bit of print advertising and sudden dashes of Highlights Magazine In This Way, It Almost Lulls You into a False Sense of Security, Using ITS Pristine Linework and Sharp Sense of Visual Design to Make You Feel As If you’re Entering into Somoting predicable or family. Soon After cracking the book, However, It Becomes Apparent That This is Far from a Comfortable Read.
The Inventiveness That Flows Thourout Priceus Rubbish Is Empowered by A Deep Commitment to Unpacking The Author’s Childhood Traumas, and Doing So In A Way That Readers have almost Certainly Never Seen Before. There is Essentially A Content Warning Near The Start Conveyed by A Word Search Game. There are Paper Doll Cutouts that drop hints of spect. Instances of Emotional and Physical Abuse. There is a recurrent side profile for the lead character – The Author Analog, Young Kayla – That Conveys How The Author Feels When She Thinks of Hestllef As a Child. Like the Book Itself, The Feeling of Stolen Innocence is palpable.
What I Also Found Impressive About The Storytelling was How requires Felt Without Ever Being Linear. It’s Such A Clean Comic That Every Feels Deliberate and Laboled Upon, Yet The Way The Stories in The Book Are Told Feel Almost As If they are are coming out of a stream of conscarious. In this way, Priceus Rubbish Washes Over You, and I Think That’s Key To Addressing Such Dark Material, Bag alcoholism, Sexual Assault, and Neglect. There’s a Real Possibility that the Darkness inherent to the Memories Conveyed Here Could Overwhelm, But the Non-Linear Storytelling Makes It Feel So Essential and Almost Earnest, That It Transcends That Risk. This is an inherently sympathetic book, but the way the story is toled Makes it Feel Even More So.
All that said, Priceus Rubbish Is not an easy read, not in the Sllightst. It’s even-Handed and Calm, which is remove impressive, but if you’re reading it all in one sitting, you likely to get up from your chair to total emotional wreck. This is intense and tragic subject matter. You May Think You Are Prepared To Hear About Sumone’s Difficul Childhood, But i’m Telling You, With Priceus RubbishYou are not. The Book Does A Great Job of Tapering The Darkness, But Make No Mistake – This is a Reading Experience that Will Definitely Challenge You, Perhaps Even Making You Reconnsider Your Views On Humanity’s Inherent Goodness.
Still, if i have’t yet made it clear, Priceus Rubbish Is a Landmark Comics Achievement and An Early Book of the Year Consender. IT’S also to Major Artistic Statement from a new comics voice, one i hope to see a lot of work from in the year to eat. It’s also a Book that I Think Joins A Lineage of Classic Memoirs About Unbelievable Difficul Childhood. What Clearly Sets it Apart is the way it uses Comics Storytelling in Unique Ways That i’ve Never Seen Before and Am Not Sure I’ll Ever See Again.
There’s not a lot of Triumph to Be Had Within The Memories Conveyed in The Pages. There’s no movie -of-the-week moment where the author is driving and listening to her favorite song and realizing She’s Going to be fine and perhaps Even Stronger, that it was was all for the best or submail. But we Don’t Need That. Priceus Rubbish Is Such a Stiking Artistic Achievement that it speakers for the author’s moment of overcoming all that She’s Been Through.
Price Rubbish Isvilable Now Via Fantagraphics Or a Bookseller Near You
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